Nearly all devotees believe
that they are exceptionally privileged compared to other people (i.e those
'outside the Sai family') and they are encouraged to believe that they will
no longer really be touched by bad, ill or evil events. They are
supposedly under special care and protection. Everything that happens has
in Sathya Sai Baba''s view to be regarded as 'maya' (i.e. the illusion of the
'unreal' profane world)., so they shoud learn to see all events - good or
bad, as being but an illusion, a passing figment. Since they think Sai Baba is
God and thus the creator of maya, they feel secure with his boast
that no devotee of his will ever come to real harm. There are, however,
countless documented examples of the failure of Sai Baba to protect or help those
who fall into major problems from illness to destitution to despair and
death... matters which those in the Sai movement cover over, explain away,
leave strictly unpublicised and hope to forget. They have a set of set answers
for every kind of situation... eg: she was not a 'true' devotee, it was
their bad karma, he was a 'bad man', Swami is testing their faith, Swami
has delivered him or her from the chains of life... and similar denials
of the harsh facts.

This belief in protection
is sheer escapism and is very restrictive of any further psycho-social and
personality development. Not being able to face facts for what they are
- but having to transform them into figments through immature phantasy -
is a known cause of arrested psychological development. Such a stgnation
can occur at any and every phase of life, it is not confined to the early
years. The results of it can be observed by staying at ashrams, like those
of SSB, which are populated very largely by persons whose lives have become
centered on their own persons and that of Sathya Sai Baba (often but to
the exclusion of healthy interest in almost anything else), which thereby
narrows perception and wears down the mind socially, mentally and emotionally.
This soon amounts to the well-known spiritual escapism so common to many
Eastern religions. Mental, emotional and/or physical wrecks resulting from
it litter the streets of India everywhere and are found in connection will
all virtually Sai communities I have visited or had much information about. One does not, however, have to live in any ashram to be largely encapsulated

Most persons
come to Sai Baba due to personal problems that they cannot solve elsewhere. The
novelty of finding a new reason for living, a retreat and a refuge,
'a spiritual home' and what one believes more and more to be a divine teacher
with all conceivable powers and graces, can be sustained for years and only
wears off gradually. I have experienced all this myself. But when
the day-to-day necessities of life eventually reassert themselves in the
life of a devotee - such as they will certainly do after having taken up
permanent ashram residence - a process of increasing self-doctrination and
self-denial is necessary to cope with the problems encountered. The detritus
of inner conflicts piles up: all
ashrams are constantly plagued
by problems of rivalry and envy, (mostly hidden and denied outwardly for
face-saving purposes). Personal and social difficulties interpreted in terms
of the new doctrine are not solved and the teaching invariably denies them
to be of any importance except as material for critical self-examination
and guilt. Above all, perhaps, the initiate has to deal with the immensely
slippery and confusion of problems which the doctrine creates in maintaining
a stark schism between the 'otherworldly reality' and so-called 'worldliness'
... or in Eliade's words, 'between the sacred and the profane'. This dualistic
doctrine - and the ill that comes of it - is
further analyzed in another
article by me as 'Spiritual Doublethink'

This easily develops
into a life-denying syndrome, urging one to project most or all values into
an unseen and transcendental reality, a kind of never-never land usually
considered attainable only in the afterlife (if lucky). Though suicide is
looked down upon as cowardly in the Sai doctrine, it has tempted enough
devotees to try it, often succeeding... for it seems to offer a release
from this world into a problem-free Sai Baba heavenliness or whatever (no
one knows quite what, of course). Our
truly human concerns 'here
and now' are systematically undermined as relative, non-essential, and somehow
mostly incompatible with the 'spiritual life'. The main emphasis is not
on daily concerns or active spirituality in everyday life, not on self-fulfillment
in 'external activities', but on one's relationship to that unseen, virtually
unknown transcendent 'reality', which is the realm of the Divine and God.
All suspicions that arise about SSB, his associates and the teachings due
to the repeated intrusions of untoward facts and events, have to be suppressed
and 'rationalized'... if, that is, the
indoctrination has not already rendered one
fully
incapable of
normal reasoning and common sense evaluation.

When
East is still East and West is still West The
neglect of 'worldly spirituality' is clearly seen in India, where traditional
'otherworldly' spirituality is predominant in the indigenous religions fostered
there. The big emphasis is on the world's impermanence and hence supposedly
'unreal nature'. Human attempts at understanding nature and life, such as
through the sciences, are looked upon pessimistically as largely irrelevant
to the spiritual life, even as a direct hindrance. Much more than Western
religions like Judaism and most mainstream sects of Christianity, Indian-based
religions tend to ignore life problems and produce societies of a traditionally
static and repressive or despotic, strictly hierarchical kind. It is noteworthy
how persons who become Sai devotees soon begin to show easy acceptance of
authoritarian practices, undemocratic ideas and handed-down social and other
superstitions which excessively infest countries like India. (Such as at
what time to begin a journey or launch an undertaking, what colour foods
to prefer and avoid, which gemstones to wear to protect against which planetary
evils, which rituals placate spirits of the departed and lots of other nonsense
also recommended and practised by Sathya Sai Baba). They live as privileged
Westerners in the midst of one of the most disasterous calamity-striken
societies, but pampered beyond what the majority of Indians can dream about
for themselves, yet thinking they are making spiritual sacrifices that will
secure them grace, such as by their dropping certain luxuries they are otherwise
used to have.

No doubt some people
do benefit for a shorter or longer period from the associations and life
changes that joining the movement involves, including Westerners. There
can be permanant benefits too... not least in learning some good things
from the foreign culture. No doubt many good people are there who do good
works, or at least try to do them. And the credit for everything has to
be given exclusively to Sathya Sai Baba at all times... everything considered
'good', that is, while everything else is due to one's own failings, bad
acts, being a sinful person etc. Add to this the undisputed fact that Sai Baba
increasingly acts contrary to his constant admonitions and advice, and is
himself under the gravest suspicion of crimes which are unsolved so far.
His declaration "My Life is My Message" is thereby undermined
and shown to be based on deception and sham. The message should rather
be that your life is yours to live autonomously. That ideal expresses faith
in people and encourages them to free themselves of psychological and superstitious
bonds from the primitive past of mankind.

Serguei Badaev
has made the following interesting points on the guru-addiction problem:

"People
who desperately need to be under protective guidance are ready to
surrender their critical thinking and moral autonomy to gain inner
peace. It seems to me that it might be a similar psychological mechanism
to chemical drugs. The reasons for people becoming drug addicted
might be very similar to the reasons for becoming guru-addicted.

I
dare put forward a hypothesis about one of those reasons. Our inner
impulses drive us to feel happy. Critical thinking often stops this
drive because a fulfillment can have distant negative consequences.
In other words, critical thinking often prevents us feeling happy
in the short-term perspective (but increases the probability of
being happy in the long-term). Alas! We often want to be happy just
now not in the future! If this want is too strong one might rather
choose to be happy now no matter what the consequences. So the key
question is, why and when does this striving for happiness become
too strong? Generally I guess (and may be banally), if children
get enough love and protection from their parents and other authoritative
adults in childhood, then when they grow up they are strong enough
not to discard critical thinking because of some bitter truth or
other.

I can't but mention an important point here: parental love and protection
should not enslave - but empower - a child. That means this love
and protection are to let a child to mature and become independent
enough to be a responsible person from the moral point of view.
So I would search for the main root of guru-addiction in poor family
and education practices."